Golf World Executive Editor Ron Sirak covered the Wegmans LPGA Championship in Rochester, New York and will be in San Francisco later this week for the U.S. Open. If you look at Shanshan Feng in 2012, she has now won 3 times on 3 different tours. She won on the Ladies European Tour and the Japan LPGA Tour so this 22-year-old can really play and her final round 67 on a very tough course is further proof of her ability. Sirak then theorized that considering the fact that the last five Majors have been won by players in Asia, the LPGA Tour may eventually look into moving the LPGA Championship to Asia in the future.
Lee Westwood won in Sweden last week in preparation for the U.S. Open and while he has some great finishes in all four Majors over the past few years, he has yet to win his first Major and the main problem almost every time has been his putting. While Westwood is clearly one of the main contenders to win at The Olympic Club, it will be interesting to see how he handles the fast greens when he has had so much success on slower greens. Plus, he will have travelled across 8 time zones to get from Sweden to San Francisco.
Great Britain & Ireland won the Curtis Cup for the first time in 1996 and Sirak thinks that was the best possible result for the game of golf. We saw that it took losing the Ryder Cup in the 1980’s for American players and American fans to take interest in that competition and the U.S. dominance of the Curtis Cup has resulted in reduced interest in that competition. Sirak hopes that the USGA and the Ladies Golf Union will consider expanding the Curtis Cup to include continental Europe.